Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Barry Cowen.

If Irish Water had been conceived as a Netflix series, we would currently be on series seven. What we are seeing and witnessing is slapstick comedy that lacks idealism. It looks like something along the lines of "The West Wing", but smells more of "House of Cards" in respect of the contempt with which the Government is approaching the introduction of its water policy. Sadly, the joke is not Netflix, but the Government approach.

Last weekend, we saw approximately 100,000 ordinary people protesting against water charges on the streets of Dublin. Their demonstration poses a significant difficulty for the Government. These are ordinary decent people, mothers, fathers, friends and neighbours and the difficulty for Fine Gael and the Labour Party is that their attempt to demonise these people for exercising their democratic right to protest against what they believe is an unfair and unjust situation is a particular low blow. The Government parties have attempted to ignore and downplay the situation and have ridiculed those protesting and tried to cover and camouflage their own nerves in regard to the situation. However, they know well that Irish Water is dead and that the game is up. They know Irish Water has failed as a policy, but have not got the courage or humility to accept this situation.

Instead, we are seeing a situation the Government intends to drag to a bitter conclusion through the use of tricks and the media.

None of these tactics has worked to date. Indeed, they all seem to have rebounded back on the Government resulting in the damaged relationship with decent people in this country, the relationship between citizens and the State. There has been an increase in the level of public cynicism as a consequence of the election of this Government and the introduction of this policy.

I wish to raise the issue of the numbers game. The Minister has informed us this evening that 1.2 million households have returned their forms to Irish Water. We can reasonably assume that over 200,000 of those households are in group water schemes which means that we can now declare the details about the number of paying customers. A total of 1.9 million households registered for the local property tax. This would leave 700,000 households which have not returned forms to date. These are people who have taken great issue with the Government. They have not registered and they will not pay. I can guarantee that their numbers will increase significantly as a consequence of the Minister's latest tactic of threatening to bring decent ordinary people to a specialist court to screw them to the end of the wall. These are the people who are hanging on by a thread.

Yesterday evening in a carefully choreographed manoeuvre the Minister attempted to scare and to intimidate decent people by threatening to reach into their salaries, their pensions and their social welfare. He was threatening to pickpocket these people. I find that appalling. No utility is being treated the way Irish Water is being treated. The Minister may as well grant the same privileges to the ESB, to Bord Gáis and why not to Vodafone or Eircom. This is a Government that could not come up with a legislative provision to reach back in time to put its hands in the pockets of retired politicians but it is going to put its hands into the pensions of retired citizens who were out on the streets last weekend. It is farcical. It is also dangerous.

The Minister has no idea that the ultimate result of this policy will be a privatisation of Irish Water. The Government does not intend to privatise Irish Water this side of a general election but at some point if it is re-elected I am sure it will discover some crisis somewhere to justify the sale of Irish Water. I refer to the Minister's attempt to intimidate the population and a Government resorting to the soft propaganda, a billboard advertising campaign costing €650,000. That is taxpayers' money while the Government continues to pulverise disability services in the west.

Irish Water was set up by the Government of Fine Gael and the Labour Party. It is a case of two political parties, one saying one thing in 2011 on the doorsteps and the other saying something else. Why does the Government not go to the country? The parties are joined at the hip on this policy. The Government should go to the country on this policy; it should call a general election and put political party money into the billboards for selling Irish Water rather than using hard-earned taxpayers' money that is being sucked out of public services in order to sustain this farcical policy.

As far back as 2009, Fine Gael had been planning the introduction of the privatisation of Irish Water. In fairness, the party was up-front from the outset about its intention. The Labour Party on the other hand, made public play about being opposed to water charges. That was the message on the doorsteps but behind the scenes they published the Every Little Bit Hurts advertising campaign. We know now that in 2010 a memo was doing the rounds about water charges and it was circulated among the upper echelons of the Labour Party, including to the leader and the deputy leader - who is now the leader - and their advisers. The memo set out clearly the details of setting in place the process of the privatisation of water. Both Fine Gael and the Labour Party had plans from the outset to introduce a memorandum of understanding around accelerating the privatisation and the removal of services from local authorities into an Irish Water entity. Fine Gael was honest. The Labour leadership never intended to maintain a promise. It did not come as a surprise. Deputy Gilmore was caught in a different type of leak as WikiLeaks revealed duplicitous engagement with the American ambassador on the Lisbon treaty. Another former leader, Deputy Ruarí Quinn, was happy to sign pledges on third level fees knowing that he was going to break them at the first available opportunity. In 2010 they knew that this was going to be a position. Of course, the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, is delighted with this new policy and he has to stand over it. He has owned this policy for years.

I ask the Minister to look at the reality that this policy with respect to Irish Water is a catastrophe. It is farcical and it must be ended.

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